Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Actually
California has been overproducing teachers in most subject areas for
years. Mike Antonucci has reviewed the Census Bureau and National
Center for Education Statistics data for California from 2006-2011 and reports
that we have a pool of more than 42,000 experienced K-12 teachers who are
available for work. He says, “Not only did the teacher workforce shrink
by 14 percent in that five-year period, but there are fewer students to educate
as well. Statewide, enrollment dropped almost one percent, and 15 of the 20
largest school districts lost students.” For more, go to http://www.eiaonline.com/intercepts/2013/06/06/california-solves-teacher-shortage/

Also in its May newsletter, NCTQ asks, “In the race
for teacher quality, how much does teachers' race matter?” They answer:

…having
race-congruent teachers appears to nudge the needle on student achievement, but
what gets overlooked is that other interventions can move it more. Here we
compare the effect sizes of teachers of the same race as their students with
the effect sizes of a few other interventions, mostly achieved when schools
have altered the curriculum.

Continuing on the subject of race, there is a new
report by two Stanford researchers that accuses white teachers of treating
black students different than white ones. While “Race and the Disciplining of
Young Students” is a paying download, the following abstract is available for
free.

There are large
racial disparities in school discipline in the United States, which, for Black
students, not only contribute to school failure but also can lay a path toward
incarceration. Although the disparities have been well documented, the
psychological mechanisms underlying them are unclear. In two experiments, we
tested the hypothesis that such disparities are, in part, driven by racial
stereotypes that can lead teachers to escalate their negative responses to
Black students over the course of multiple interpersonal (e.g.,
teacher-to-student) encounters. More generally, we argue that race not only can
influence how perceivers interpret a specific behavior, but also can enhance
perceivers’ detection of behavioral patterns across time. Finally, we discuss
the theoretical and practical benefits of employing this novel approach to
stereotyping across a range of real-world settings.

Worried about your students cheating on exams? You’re not
alone. In fact, China is so concerned that it’s getting ready to send in the
drones.

Cheating
is a common problem in the examination rooms, with students employing a variety
of tactics to increase their chances of getting into one of China's best higher
education institutions. Chinese authorities have not released figures about how
many people are caught cheating every year, but in 2014 Kotaku detailed some of
the equipment being used by cheats to try and fool invigilators. One such
method involved using pens to send test questions to a remote location, with
answers being sent back to the cheats via in-ear receivers.

This
is where the drone comes in, reports Edu People. Introduced by the Luoyang
Radio Authority, it can search for and identify the location of radio signals,
intercepting the cheating students in their tracks. The drone hovers 500 metres
above the test site and has a range of around 1km. When it identifies a radio
signal, it transmits the location of the signal to tablets used by staff.

The
school choice world was rocked this month when Nevada became the first state in
the country to embrace universal Educational Savings Accounts. Whereas vouchers give parents the
freedom to choose a private school for their children, using some public
funding, ESAs – now a reality in five states – are more expansive, typically
allowing restricted but multiple uses of the money. Nevada’s version covers
tuition at approved private schools, as well as textbooks, tutoring services,
tuition for distance learning programs, fees for special instruction if the
child has a disability, etc. Money will be dispersed to students’ ESAs on a
quarterly basis, and there will be two tiers to the program. As reported by the
Friedman Foundation’s Michael Chartier,

For those children with disabilities or
students from families with incomes less than 185 percent of the federal
poverty level ($44,863 for a family of four), students will receive 100 percent
of the statewide average basic support per-pupil, or around $5,700. For
families with incomes exceeding 185 percent of the federal poverty level, the
funding amount is 90 percent of the statewide average basic support per pupil,
or around $5,100.

We have recently updated our “cheat sheet,” which is
available on the CTEN homepage. What do we really spend on education in
California? What are teachers’ salaries nationwide? Where does California rank
nationally on NAEP scores? We answer these questions and a lot more on this
very popular page. To visit it, go tohttp://www.ctenhome.org/cheatsheet.html

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